1.5.13-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.5.13 The Solution of Some Questions connected with the Municipal Police Or Javert does not understand what attempted murder is. Fantine’s just in a daze at this point and passively submitting. I’m glad that Javert has enough of a sense of propriety to conduct his policing in private. The comparison of Fantine to a terrified is some more dehumanizing language. "A prostitute had made an attempt on the life of a citizen. He had seen that, he, Javert." Seriously, Javert? In what universe is a fight, even a fight in which a healthy guy is overcome by a frozen and half-starved woman, an attempt on a life? I mean, really. Clearly someone is remembering things differently than what actually happened. If asked to describe it he’d probably recall she held a knife to his throat or something. Is Fantine even going to get a trial or does Javert’s discretion mean she gets automatically six months? I was expecting that by ‘she’s a prostitute so the police can do what they want’ it meant that they could abuse their authority and their word always carried more weight, not literally that they got to unilaterally send people to prison. Even people who were obviously guilty of treason got trials! Wait, Fantine would earn seven sou a day in prison? How would she even know that? I can’t believe that that’s right. To begin with, it’s slightly more than half of what she got on the outside. And Considering that Valjean was only expecting to earn 171 francs and ended up with 109 after nineteen years…Google says (though I suppose it could be wrong) that slightly less than 25 sous is one franc. Even only assuming she worked and got paid for five days a week to try and balance forced rest and festivals, that’s 35 sous a week and more than one franc. In nineteen years that would make nearly 1400 francs. Do men’s prisons or forced labor prisons get less than that? Have prison wages increased dramatically in the last few years? I think Fantine just seriously underestimates how bad prison is. I mean, Valjean’s only expecting to make about nine francs a YEAR. According to Fantine’s calculations she’d earn that in six and a half weeks. And Valjean actually makes about 5.7 francs a year. How does she still owe the Thenardiers so much if she’s a prostitute? Is she not good at it? Does she get ripped off? Does she have to give most of her earnings to some sort of pimp? She did it in the first place because she needed far more money than she could get sewing. I don’t think they’d keep adding hundreds of francs to her tab whens he hasn’t paid up the first hundred. Greedy or not there’s no point until they have the previous ‘debt’ paid. Perhaps this is another example of Fantine being horrible with money and thinking she’d make more than she did. Fantine’s rambling speech is really heartbreaking and not consistent. She starts off by saying that it wasn’t her fault since she was clearly provoked but then she changes it so that she was wrong to ruin the hat of the guy who was harrassing her. Personally, if I ruined anyone’s hat under any circumstances even if I wasn’t being harrassed I wouldn’t feel myself particularly wrong because, well, it’s a hat. And Bamatabois isn’t poor so I think it’s the same principle as today. Fantine tries to say that she wishes she could apologize and then she realizes that actually she doesn’t. It’s not the government’s fault the wages that they pay in prison (which are crappier than Fantine assumes)? The hell it isn’t. Fantine also misremembers/misunderstands the Thenardiers threat. She says Cosette will be sent to her if she can’t pay. That would cost money which is why Fantine didn’t send for her when she still had a job and was respectable. Cosette would (possibly if they are through with her slave labor) be turned out on the streets to die. Even now, hating the world, she seems blind to most of the evil in it. Except the evil of Madeleine which she thinks a lot of. Even if he did personally fire her, I can think of a lot of people more to blame for her current state than he but that’s not how Fantine remembers it. She’s seriously reaching Loki-levels of ‘what actually happened does not resemble what you remember happening.’ Of course there’s no point in asking Javert to give mercy to anyone though I am rather impressed that Fantine manages to come up with such an eloquent speech like that off the cuff when she’s in such a bad state. I kind of doubt that Fantine has literally become beautiful again because she’s so unhappy. I still find it weird that a heart of wood is apparently harder to soften than a heart of stone which is, I guess, why it’s changed to heart of stone in the musical. How nice of Javert to at least hear her out before not letting it change his mind in the slightest. It reminds me of that racist rant in Twelve Angry Men and the juror turns to the only guy who hasn’t stood up and turned away and pleaded with him to listen and the guy snaps that he has and then orders him to shut up. Apparently Javert believes that God himself could not do anything more for Fantine. Not should not or would not, cannot. And then Madeleine shows up and totally does. It’s not what Javert meant but it is kind of funny. I guess Javert gets to order soldiers around since the police is so understaffed? Not a bad trade-off, I don’t think. Okay, the hell that Javert called him “Mr. Mayor” since every other time it’s called “M. le Maire.” Fantine calls him that herself two lines down! Fantine is really not thinking through spitting in her face. I would not be surprised if Javert tried to add a year for this fresh assassination attempt. It’s probably a good thing Javert is frozen in horror at this point or he’d have some sort of nervous breakdown. I wonder what he thinks Madeleine might be. I see Fantine remembers what she has done to be arrested as ruining some guy’s hat when I’m pretty sure what actually happened was she beat the crap out of him. Of course Madeleine gave away all the money he had on him! It’s really sad but also morbidly amusing that Fantine just can’t comprehend that the guy who fired her and this must be the world’s worst person all his good works be damned could let her go and so she decides Javert must have done it even though he has shown literally no sympathy before. And her just shutting down Madeleine when he tries to pay her debts for her…THAT she can process as coming from him. Though if she realized why he wanted to know she’d assign that to Javert, too. She thinks Madeleine came there to frighten her…for some reason? How does she think he’s trying to frighten her? By asking how much she owes? Just by standing there. She must be seriously feverish at this point. Women, or perhaps she means prostitutes, are there for men to amuse themselves with according to Fantine. Apparently she now thinks it’s perfectly cool what Bamatbaois did. Someone get this woman a doctor. And Fantine imagines, even as he is a good man letting her go for Cosette’s sake, that he will call her a hussy and there’s nothing wrong with that and this whole situation is deeply disturbing. In the future, she promised to quietly accept every abuse like a good girl. And she gives Javert what may be his first, last, and only contact with a breast. Javert apparently is having the same sort of breakdown as Fantine but quieter. She has a raging fever. What is his excuse? He has decided, as Hugo before him, that he is the personification of all law and that when Madeleine said ‘let her go’ he really meant something else. Now since Javert tried to stop her from leaving and Madeleine repeated that he said to let her go, Fantine has started to realize what actually happened. And he said Mr. Mayor again! Dear God, maybe he’s feverish too! Now he remembers it as she has insulted a citizen. I dearly hope insulting people is not actually illegal at this point but, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Is Fantine not considered a citizen or does Javert mean a citizen of worth? I don’t think Javert being honest counts for as much as Fantine and Madeleine seem to think give how black-and-white and unyielding he is. So he’s honest about the fact that he gives no fucks about other people’s motivations and mitigating circumstances and does not take bribes while he casually aids the law in destroying people without a second thought. How is this really a good thing or something that would benefit anybody? I’m surprised the terrible people of M-sur-M believe Bamatabois to be in the wrong. Or maybe they just said what happened and Madeleine drew his own conclusions. This is the first time Javert is opposing Madeleine? What about all those times he stalked him and tried to prove he was guilty of something or other? Javert is such a social snob. Fantine must be guilty because have you seen Bamatabois’ house? Madeleine is the only one who knows the civil code as well as Javert does, I suspect. We’re not told he knows it perfectly but we all know that he does. Fantine ridding herself of hatred came much easier than Valjean doing the same, I must say. Then good things started happening because Madeleine is wonderful and willing to literally give Fantine the moon. If only she weren’t so sick.